Canada–Denmark border

An island exactly in the middle

Hans Island, called Tartupaluk in Greenlandic, sits in Kennedy Channel, part of the Nares Strait between Canada's Ellesmere Island and Greenland.^[2] It covers about 1.2 km², has no vegetation or wildlife, and nobody lives there.^[2] Modern satellite images place it in the middle of the strait, 18 km from both shores.^[3]

Greenland is part of the Kingdom of Denmark, so a border with Greenland is a border with Denmark. The 2022 agreement gave Greenland its first border on land.^[5] For Canada, commentators noted it would be a second land border, after the one with the United States.^[3]

The question of who owned the island first came up in 1973, when Canada and Denmark agreed a line dividing the seabed (the continental shelf) between Greenland and Canada. The island sat right on that line, and the two sides could not agree on it. So they left it out: the 1973 line stops at the low-water mark on the island's south side and starts again on its north side.^[3][6]

Two claims and the “Whisky War”

According to Lackenbauer and Nielsen, Denmark based its claim mainly on discovery, geology and use. American-led expeditions recorded the island in the second half of the 19th century, with the Greenlandic explorer Hans Hendrik taking part, and Greenlandic Inuit stopped there when crossing to Ellesmere Island to hunt.^[3] Canada based its claim on an 1880 British order-in-council that handed it Britain's remaining North American territories and the islands next to them, and its maps long placed the island on the Canadian side of the median line.^[3]

In 1984 Denmark's minister for Greenland, Tom Høyem, visited the island, planted a Danish flag and left a note: “Welcome to the Danish Island”. Canada protested.^[3] For roughly two decades afterwards, visitors from each side swapped the other's flag for their own and left a bottle behind, Canadian Club whisky from Canada and schnapps from Denmark. It became known as the “Whisky War”.^[3]

Tension rose when Danish naval ships visited in 2002 and 2003, and Canadian soldiers and the defence minister Bill Graham landed in 2005.^[3] In September 2005 the two governments issued a joint statement promising to keep working towards a solution and to keep any contact with the island “low key and restrained”.^[3]

Splitting the island

In 2018 Canada, Denmark and Greenland set up a joint task force on their Arctic boundary questions. After years of talks, much of it online during the pandemic, negotiators reached an agreement in principle in Reykjavík in November 2021.^[3]

On 14 June 2022 Canada's foreign minister Mélanie Joly, Denmark's foreign minister Jeppe Kofod and Greenland's premier Múte B. Egede signed the agreement in Ottawa.^[4] The land boundary follows a natural ravine that runs the length of the island, roughly north to south, and splits it about in half.^[2] Denmark/Greenland gets slightly more of the island. The line needs only three points: a northern end, a southern end, and a turning point in the middle.^[3]

The same agreement fixed the sea boundary in the Lincoln Sea to the north and the continental shelf boundary in the Labrador Sea to the south, and modernised the 1973 line in between.^[4][2] It also guarantees that Inuit and local people from Avanersuaq in Greenland and from Nunavut in Canada can keep moving freely across the whole island to hunt, fish and carry on other activities.^[2]

Denmark's parliament approved the agreement on 19 December 2023, with 109 votes for and none against.^[7] In its 2024 Arctic foreign policy, Canada said it was still working out a border regime for the island with Nunavut and local Inuit communities, and that this was the last step before the agreement could come into force.^[8]

“The agreement sets a land boundary on Hans Island/Tartupaluk that follows a natural ravine that runs the length of the island, in a general direction from north to south, and divides the island roughly in half.”^[3]